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“Then I shall get an invitation to you and your… let’s call her your paramour… and send it to your house.”

“Thank you.” Ford stood and sketched a bow. “I owe you.”

“Please.” Blake also stood and waved the gratitude away. “If anything, we are now even.”

* * *

Ford arrived home a few hours later. He stepped off the hackney and looked around. He’d always done that, taken in the entire street, to ensure no criminals lurked in the shadows.

The street was busy with people walking to and fro and a couple of boys playing across the road. He’d seen them playing in that exact spot when he left the house earlier in the day. Normally, he wouldn’t have found it odd, but these particular boys had stopped doing whatever they were doing the moment Ford appeared out of the hackney.

Now they were back to playing and minding their business.

Ford shrugged. He was probably just getting paranoid.

He walked inside, took off his hat and coat, and hung them by the door. His dusty, lonely house made him want to howl.

He imagined the hearth blazing, food ready, and a bath steaming as he came home. A woman greeted him with a smile at the door.

Hell, he’d settle just for a warm home and a woman. Someone he would tell all his woes, listen to her beautiful lilting voice, hug her waist, and hold her close…

With a sigh, he went to heat some water for his bath.

He was filthy. If he had a woman waiting for him, she would probably refuse to embrace him until he cleaned up anyway. He wasn’t sure she’d welcome all his associations, either. What proper wife would encourage him to go back to work where he’d have to frolic with a harlot?

He snorted.

The image of Madame Tricheuse appeared before his mind. She was seductive, the vixen, he had to concede. No doubt, she made a lot of money just for the way she looked at men. As if they were the only one in the world. No, as if they were the most desirable men in the world.

There wasn’t anything extraordinary about her appearance. At first glance, he might have even missed her. Plenty of other women were more generously endowed with feminine assets. But the way she walked and held herself, it was clear she knew how to present the gifts she possessed.

Ford heated some leftover soup and had a bowl while waiting for the water to heat up.

His house was incredibly quiet. Usually, he would welcome the silence after a long work day. But lately, he often caught himself wishing for companionship.

Today, he thought of Madame Tricheuse.

It was a testament to the sad life he lived that he resorted to fantasizing about a harlot. The persona she put up in front of him was probably not real, anyway. He was dreaming about a ghost. No wonder men kept clamoring at the door of The House of Pain and Pleasure. Whatever it took to be in her company… To hold her, to kiss her, make her kiss them—

Now that thought made him angry.

Not at her. But at every man who ever touched her. What a strange feeling.

As he finished his meal and attended to the dishes, he kept batting his wayward thoughts away, but they kept coming back with vengeance.

By the time the water heated and he filled the bath with steaming water, he lost the battle with himself. He stripped off his clothes and lowered himself into the warm, pleasant bath. He washed himself while letting his mind bathe in the fantasy.

What if it were Madame Tricheuse’s hands roaming his body, not his? What if she caressed him gently while whispering in his ear?

What if her lips brushed against his skin, leaving a trail of fire in their wake? What if she looked at him with those piercing eyes, filled with desire and mischief? The water around him seemed to echo his racing heartbeat as he closed his eyes and let himself drown in the intoxicating daydream.

Lost in the fantasy, he reached for his cock and gripped it tightly. Only in his dreams, it wasn’t his hand grasping him, it was Madame Tricheuse on her knees in front of him, holding him between her fingers, stroking his length.

He wished he knew her real name, but it didn’t matter as long as she knew his.

He wanted to hear her call him Ford just before she licked her lips and locked them around the head of his cock. Water sloshed out of his bath as his hips thrust forward, driving his cock into his hand. Her slippery tongue would circle his cock and then she’d suck him in.

Ford groaned, the bath scraping against the floor from the force of his thrusts. He kept moving his hips, thrusting into his hand, imagining the sultry look in her eyes as she sucked on his length, played with him, stroked him.